Freddie adjusted her tie and pursed her lips in annoyance. Her rouge was meticulously done, her orange (it was assuredly orange, despite all opinions to the contrary) hair pulled back severely so that her large eyes would give the sense of her being younger than her seventeen years, and her dress slacks and white formal lawn were pressed to perfection. She was, in essence, the visual representation of calm and composed.
If she could but say the same of her partner. Gregory paced the small backroom in the Light Bug Bar and Grill and mussed his already mussed red hair. His black suit jacket had rumpled as he'd lounged earlier, affecting a pose of relaxation before their latest employer. Mr. Chadwick was sufficiently certain of his latest “find” and thus, they had a billing on real paper as well as highlighted in lights in the reader board over the bar.
No, that relaxation had lasted as long as it had taken Chadwick to exit the room, then her brother leapt to his feet and began to pace. The unruffled demeanor completely broken, Gregory had come to a point of undoing the ties in his hair and pulling it out to set it back into place, then resetting it, only to pull at it once more. He muttered as he went, his eyes on the floors, on the walls, now and again, swinging wildly about him as if he were about to be menaced by the pictures on the walls.
Freddie huffed and folded their paper billing Real Magic, Out of this World! Gregory Charmaigne, the Magnificent! One Night Only, LIGHT BUG PUB, Entrex Park St. Point of Entry, #205. A real paper billing. Paper wasn't used quite so often so to have prompted anyone to print something meant they might even be on their way up to the Big Time. Gregory had always wanted to be there. He'd promised her the world hadn't he? He had; a real pool, indoors, and a horse. It was a child's dream and she'd settle these days for knowing that their next meal would be in the same room at the end of the month as well as an ability to stop long enough for her to take real classes.
Gregory glanced at her, his blue eyes startlingly light and set off by the fake tan he wore to make himself more glamorous as well as to cover his freckles.
“Well, here goes,” he announced with a sudden, glittering smile. Like that, her brother was gone and the magician was visible. He smoothed his hand over his jacket, checked small pockets, then winked at her as he swept from the room.
Freddie sighed, pulled a toffee out of the satchel on the table, and closed her eyes. She wasn't needed for another ten minutes. She had time to relax.
Ten minutes later, Gregory Charmaigne the Magnificent, whisked aside a curtain and escorted a pixie like creature with ruby hair and wide, violet eyes, down from the platform. She, he, it was difficult to tell, quavered before the audience.
“Hush, my good people,” Gregory's voice intoned out over the awed crowd. “You are as strange to this one as it is to you. A delicate flower from the djinn lands in distant Araby, this summons is but an invitation to our world.” He smiled beatifically at the creature who glanced up at him, both bemused and trusting. “What is your name child?”
The creature had a large ruby affixed to its brow and its hand fluttered as it turned from the lights on the stage. “Please,” the wizard beckoned, “bring down the lights some?” He smiled. “It seems almost human, does it not?” He lifted a hand and as the lights dimmed slightly, the creature turned back toward the crowd. As the lights dropped, the creature was more visible, its body floating in golden lights, limned from behind as if by a million lightning bugs, twinkling all about it's form. It smiled in relief and then began to sing a short refrain. The wizard chuckled as the crowd gasped at the perfect notes.
“And thus, is their language, my good people. He, says his name is Sun Flare, and he is aptly named I should think.” He bowed slightly toward the djinn. “Please, my new friend, will you bless us? It is difficult I know to remain in our world,” indeed the lights about the creature were already dimming, “but before you quit us?”
The tiny thing gave a small curtsey and with a flare of lights all about it, it trilled an aria, so beautiful as to leave some of the less strong ladies in a swoon. As the trilling blessing rose, the lights about it flared and then a flash of light, brighter than a sun itself, giving off heat all about the room, and the djinn was gone, not behind the curtain, but simply gone. A scent of jasmine and smoke all that remained.
The wizard's face looked crestfallen. “It was but a young one, I am sad it could not remain, but it is how the worlds are made, with veils which might close as swiftly as they are drawn back.” He smiled and as the stunned crowd blinked lights from their eyes, they began to clap, then to cheer.
He lifted his arms to either side of himself, wide as if to embrace their accolades and bowed before them. He could not have been heard over the din to tell them of his next spell if he had shouted. His white teeth flashed and for a moment, with the scent of smoldering hell and jasmine, he almost looked like he wasn't fully human either.
Behind the curtain, a young girl stripped from her costuming, pulled the wig from her orange hair, and stuffed all into a bag as she ran to get the next trick set up as her brother calmed the crowd.
